M101 Electrical Harness Differences

[Mike_L]

Greetings all,

I've been looking at M101 trailers for years now but only recently paid much attention to the cabling setups. I see on some of the earlier trailers, there is the intervehicular cable that runs from the tow vehicle to the connector at the front of the bed, between the brake handles. Some of the later M101 trailers have a box on the drawbar between the body and pintle, as the A1-A3 have, where the intervehicular cable connects with the trailer harness.

When did they change over? Or, were they all made the same and changed over in-service during overhaul/MWO?

 

[rosco]

I don't know when the change over happened. Have to check the year of manufacture of the M101A2 that I just purchased from GL. Once home, I changed the lights to the later version with LED's. The new LED wiring is color coordinated. There was something confusing to me, about it, comparing the old numbers to the newer ones with the colors. Plus the LED's are very sensitive to "grounding".

Also, the old M37's were not set up for turn lights.

 

[Mike_L]

Thanks for the note Rosco. Your A2 wouldn't have had the wiring harness I'm referring to. I think these intervehicular harness, with the junction receptacle between the brake handles, were only on the early M101 trailers. I haven't seen them on the A1 or other variants. John Bizal has a trailer with this setup on his Vehicles for Sale page. Also, Nick's trailer is setup with it too.

 

[Nick]

Mike,
My trailer is considered an "early" M101. Its a 1952. As I understood it when I was trying to find out when stuff changed, like the handles on mine, to the barrel style handles, the change wasnt too long after 52, like maybe 53-54. I beleive thats when the electrical connections changed also.

I got two different inter vehicular cables. Both like you talk about. One has the military round connectores at both ends, and one has the military connector and the flat box, with about five or six wires coming out of it. I f=got this one before I knew about the first kind I listed. Well anyway, I converted the one with the wires coming out of it to be used with my Dakota, and I will use the correct one to pull behind my Power Wagon when I get the restoration done.


Nick

 

[MWMULES]

To the above I have a 57 and a 59 M101 they both have the early style parking brake handles but neither have the box in the middle. They both have the later style on the side rail. The early M100 also had the double ended cable and a box to store it in.

 

[Mike_L]

Thanks for the info. I saw a Dunbar-Kapple mfd, 11-1953 delivery dated trailer that did not have the box between the brake handles. I was wondering if it was made like that or an in-service MWO change to the current cable setup.

I thought all M101 trailers had the early parking brake handles and the barrel/late style were only used on the A1-A3 trailers.